We Fight for Both

“So forget the frantic punditry about Democratic messaging. The hemming and hawing about identity politics. The false choice being offered by armchair quarterbacks telling us we have to pick between voters in Texas or Milwaukee. Pennsylvania or Arizona. The coal miner in Kentucky or the single mom in the Bronx. We choose both. We fight for both. Because both woke up this morning feeling like their country doesn’t really care if they win or lose.”

We fight for both. I’ve been saying that since day 1. Really sick of the false binaries presented by too many on this blog. We fight for both. Always. That’s what Democrats have done and that’s what we need to do to win back the trust of the American people.

Racism makes us view black and brown poverty, unemployment, and drug addiction as a moral failure. Sexism makes us view female poverty, unemployment, and drug addiction as a moral failure. Both make us view white male poverty, addiction, and unemployment as a national failure. The reason we can’t choose between class politics and identity politics is that they are intricately linked. We have to fight one to fight the other, and we have to solve both in order to solve either. The sooner we realize this, the better off our country will be.

The coal miner in Kentucky or the single mom in the Bronx. We choose both. We fight for both. Because both woke up this morning feeling like their country doesn’t really care if they win or lose.”

You can’t have it both ways. You simply can’t.

The coal miner in Kentucky has been told, and fervently believes, that the single mom in the Bronx is the problem. The single mom in the Bronx woke up to find a sexual predator is still the President.

The problem isn’t that both feel their country doesn’t care, the problem is that one, the coal miner, believes the lies that he’s been told. The problem is that the other, the single mom in the Bronx, has likely been a victim of, at best, sexual harassment and at worst sexual assault, and believes, not without justification, that the coal miner cares more about his job than her safety.

And, as Ta-Nehisi Coates points out, everybody…. EVERY. LAST. PERSON… who voted Obama woke up today to see the ongoing attempt to absolutely negate their vote…. in direct support of the coal miner.

You want to fight for the coal miner? You have to start by telling him, straight up an flat out, they he’s been lied to and that his sin is that he believes the lies.

I think you start doing that by actually going to their communities and having these tough conversations. JFK and RFK didn’t write off any part of America. They went to Appalachia. So did Paul Wellstone on his People’s Tour in 1998. So did. Barack Obama, campaigning in the most rural and white caucus state in the country-and winning.

We also forget Hillary ignored inner city Detroit, Akron, Cleveland, Philadelphia, and Milwaukee in her campaign. If you want to say black voters matter, maybe you should campaign in their communities too.

The lesson is we fight racism and classism simultaneously or we are damned to endure both for another generation.

I fear we are falling into a Bayesean probability trap, because hindsight is so much more accurate than foresight. Nate SIlver addresses this at length in his tome.

A good example of this is what happens AFTER a major terrorist event happens (like 9/11), and our media is filled with conspiracy theories and self-righteous attacks on “incompetent” agencies who “missed obvious clues” because we know, in retrospect, what was going to happen and who was going to do it. Then we see, again in retrospect, that the participants and planners used social media and so on to exchange messages that — IN HINDSIGHT — foreshadowed the event. The rub is that it is VERY MUCH more difficult to correctly identify such things in advance.

A post mortem of EVERY losing campaign is going to identify the specific regions and demographic groups that made the difference.

A number of pundits “predicted” the 2008 collapse. In retrospect, each seems amazingly prescient — AFTER the crash. When examined more closely, it turns out that any one of them “predicted” such things over and over again. None of those failed predictions get any attention, though.

So JTM fills BMG with attacks of virtually EVERY aspect of everybody associated with “Clinton”. Bill Clinton. Hillary Clinton. Chelsea Clinton. Chelsea Clinton’s husband, for crying out loud. Then, when Ms. Clinton loses the election, he tells us over and over “See! Told you! Sell-out!”.

I think that a more objective analysis — after a few more election cycles — will lead us to some different answers. I think the approach you take here ignores all the things that the Democrats did right in the 2016 campaign.

The things we need to do in 2020 will be different from the things we needed to do in 2016. Right now, I just hope that we HAVE an election in 2020.

Finally, I don’t see how anybody can “forget” that Ms. Clinton “ignored inner city Detroit, Akron, Cleveland, Philadelphia, and Milwaukee in her campaign”. My god, man, that particular axe has been ground a gazillion times here.

I think that you are not looking at all the comparable inner city stops Ms. Clinton DID make. I think you forget that every campaign triages their schedule in order to target events that the campaign thinks will change voters. Yes, I think she DID take those groups for granted in those cities.

Eventually, we will see analyses that describe where she went when she was NOT in those places. Did Barack Obama visit those places? I don’t know. Do you?

Yes, we must fight racism and classism simultaneously.

At some point, as others here have observed, we must also make choices. Those urban minority voters accurately believe that large numbers of Donald Trump supporters blame them because they are black. Those urban minority voters accurately believe that those coal miners in WVA and Kentucky want to slash government programs that benefit urban minorities and want to arm the police that murder them to the teeth.

So when we “reach out” to those deplorables, those urban minority voters NOTICE. That outreach drives them away, because it sends them a message that our much-vaunted “values” don’t actually mean shit when it comes to ACTUALLY determining ACTUAL policy.

So I think we need to know what our values are, and I think we need to be very clear about how we “reach out” to voters who not only do not share but that explicitly, consciously, and flagrant REJECT those values.

I think there is a realistic chance that one or more of the following might happen between now and the 2020 election::

1. There will be thermonuclear exchange. If that happens, I think all bets are off.
2. There will be a constitutional crisis provoked by the Mueller investigation or related issues. The administration will give a raised middle finger to the other branches (just as he did in the pardon of Mr. Arpiao). I have zero confidence that anybody in the GOP will do anything at all.
3. Mr. Trump will himself declare some sort of fabricated “national emergency” and suspend the rule of law.

The other two branches are still jealous enough of their own prerogatives to let your conspiracy theory come to fruition. The Mueller investigation will take time, but will ultimately if anything prove the resiliency of our system. Some countries give Presidents the prerogative of suspending the rule of law on account of a national emergency. The US isn’t one of them. There will be no Reichstag fire here.

The army, navy, and air force also know the difference between lawful and unlawful orders. Plus we have a much longer and more solid democratic tradition than the Weimar Republic, which still wasn’t quite a generation removed from royal dictatorship.

This is why I favor an all or above approach to outreach. Your wrong to write off working class whites, John and is wrong to obsess about them. I really think your right about this being a fight to save the entire country from eternal damnation and good evangelists forgive the sins and prior loyalties of new converts. They also preach the Gospel in hostile territory, even saving one soul is worth the risk.

So by all means let us condemn all forms of bigotry and income inequality and how they reinforce one another. And if we build it-they will come. And it’s about fixing our democracy to prevent this outcome again.

Let’s kill the EC, kill racist gerrymandering, and kill a lot of the ways our country still acts like a bourgeois republic instead of a truly representative democracy. Make those reforms a part of our agenda too.

And by all means let’s stop fighting one another. Trump is a far bigger threat to our future than the candidate you didn’t like in the last primary. A far bigger threat to workers and minorities alike than any compromised candidate our party could possibly produce. Literally every single Democrat-even Manchin-would be better than the Republicans we have in a Congress and the racist rapist we have in the White House.

Agreed, with a proviso: I have never proposed that we “write off working class whites”.

I propose, instead, to reach out to working class whites who share our values, and to provide an effective strategy and response to those working class whites who have opposed us and who are now rethinking their own views.

I propose, instead, to reach out to working class whites who share our values

Absolutely, and I don’t think our party (legit not singling out any candidate on this) has done a great job of that either. But I also think good movements reach beyond those that already share their values to create converts. It’s worth noting that the right has been incredibly successful at finding cracks in our own coalition and exploiting them. They mobilized an entirely apolitical constituency (evangelicals) into an electoral force.

Successful progressive movements have often been the ones that use that language of populism and turns it against big business instead of other races or moral systems. All the major 20th century progressive movements came out of bold attacks on big business and Wall Street. It’s rhetoric-maybe rhetoric we are uncomfortable with-but it’s rhetoric that works to mobilize the masses.

The most successful cross racial movements in American history have all been populist. From the Greenback Party which brought poor whites and blacks to take Southern statehouses pre-Jim Crow. to the original Populists, to the TR/Wilson Progressive Era, to the FDR/LBJ Liberal Consensus. MLK and Walter Reuther literally marching arm in arm for one another. Clintons politics were a politics suited for an age of prosperity. That era is fading as the prosperity it brought has come to an end. We are now facing something a lot more similar to the Gilded Age at best, or Weimar at worst. We need to adapt a radical program suited for the radical anger of the times.

I might add that people forget Jim Crow was erected to dismantle a very successful alliance of white and black farmer-laborers against the agrarian gentry. In every other advanced nation where social democracy has taken shape, the farmer-laborer alliance won. In our country, it lost. And it lost because racism ended up being exploited to crack that wedge in that early working class coalition. A wedge the right exploits to this day.

The most successful cross racial movements in American history have all been populist. From the Greenback Party which brought poor whites and blacks to take Southern statehouses pre-Jim Crow

I’m not at all convinced that the Greenbacks were much of a success on their own terms and am entirely convinced that U.S Grants willingness to back Reconstruction with military heft, including going after terrorist groups attempting to suppress the vote of the freedmen, had quite a lot to do with the make-up of pre-Jim Crow Southern Statehouses… ( But that’s not fashionable since US Grants character was the other assassination resulting from the Civil War… )

I might add that people forget Jim Crow was erected to dismantle a very successful alliance of white and black farmer-laborers against the agrarian gentry. In every other advanced nation where social democracy has taken shape, the farmer-laborer alliance won. In our country, it lost.

It lost when, in the compromise of 1877, the Southern Democrats agreed to seat Hayes in the White House in exchange for the wholesale removal of troops from former Confederate States, effectively ending Reconstruction. People forget that Reconstruction was working and was working because Grant directed Sheridan to use military might to enforce it vigorously… and it only ended because the Southern Democrats, much like todays racists, were feeling too much pain at the loss of their privilege and the vigor of the enforcement. So, yeah, the alliances you cite are real, but were not spontaneous demonstrations of agrarian capitalism: they were backed by Reconstruction and when Reconstruction was compromised away, so to the dismantling of the alliances was begun

The link was to the Wilmington coup-the Populists from the 80’s and 90’s did briefly gain power in a post-Reconstruction state. The Greenbacks were earlier but had some successes. Their failure was real, and a lesson to us all in how powerful racism is at preventing the kind of class solidarity the working class of this country needs to have.

I wholeheartedly agree with you that Rutherfraud B. Hayes decision goes down in history as one of the most corrupt a president has made. And that President Grant was a much better President than people remember. Probably our best in between Lincoln and TR.

I think you make some valid points Tom. I’m trying really hard to separate myself from JTMs bromides and ad hominems against the Clinton’s and have a data based discussion as much as possible. I frankly don’t care about personalities, I care about policies and how to best implement them.

So I’ll reframe it. Forget about Bernie and Hillary for a moment. If the threat of Trump was not enough to draw it black and Latino turnout than we have a HUGE organizational problem in reaching and mobilizing those voters. Not to mention we’ve dropped the ball on voter rights and fair elections. No doubt they should’ve voted-but many didn’t and I think we ALL-especially white liberals-need to own that problem and learn from it.

My school started a restorative justice approach to dealing with misbehavior that might help us with this outreach. There’s no such thing as bad students, only bad behaviors. We can have a zero tolerance toward bad behaviors in school, but the goal is to restore the kids to community and steer them toward good citizenship and scholarship. Some may need to be expelled-burn that’s a last resort.

Similarly, we need to confront admittedly deplorable racist behaviors and ideas without condemning an entire group of people as deplorable and preemptively expel them from our outreach and membership. Give them a chance to repent and learn from what they did wrong.

This means being fully honest that they voted for a racist and racist policies, and letting them know that the non-racist reasons they had don’t hold water with this Goldman infested administration. Offer them a strong non racist and truly populist alternative and many will flip. Many more will not and they can stay expelled. Does this make sense?

Our candidates need to do MORE emphasizing the fight against racism. First, because it’s a moral imperative, and second, to bring minority voters back into the fold and/or in greater number.

Our candidates need to do MORE to emphasize fighting economic inequality in all parts of the country. I think a Joe Kennedy or Liz Warren would give a speech where they condemn racism and income inequality in the same breadth. Like it did for RFK, it will draw a multiracial multiclass coalition committed to a better country. It may not lead to electoral realignment overnight, but it plants seeds as the right did in formerly moderate and even progressive states like Missouri or Wisconsin that have now swung sharply to the right.

This is about getting the progressive minority in red states organized and mobilized to take back those states, Iys about getting the alienated black and Latino working class to identify as progressive and identify with the Democratic Party which they also feel has abandoned them or is simply irrelevant to their needs.

I think your right that this is going to be a generational effort to organize a 50 state party and strategy to fight to preserve and expand progressive values, not just one or two election cycles focused on specific candidates. This is a secular movement to fight for the spirit of our country. We have to treat one another as neighbors who take care of one another. It’ll be a long and hard fight. It’s a necessary one.

Fair, what about my strategy for dealing with these issues on the both/and front? What about looking past the last election and both primary candidates on what we can do as citizens?

Obama being President didn’t stop Dylan Root. We have a deep disease in our culture we need to cleanse. You’ve been quite vocal and accurate about diagnosing it-but I am curious how we cure it?

I think we do black Americans a disservice if we wrap up fighting white supremacy in fighting the last primary campaign. Trump is merely a symptom of a much more corrosive and corroded culture. How do we make that better? This goes beyond candidates and really should be about a cause.

I guess one aspect of this is to admit that this is not something we “cure”. I think this is, instead, a chronic disease. That means that we:

1. Learn how to recognize and respond to the symptoms as they arise.
2. Learn how to avoid the behaviors and situations that cause those symptoms
3. Learn how to live and limit the impact of the symptoms as best we can

I enthusiastically agree that this must be about a cause. Even more strongly, it is about our core values. When we reach out to minority voters, we only succeed if they recognize that these are our core values even we imperfectly act on them. When we reach out to white working class voters, we only succeed if they recognize that these are our core values and ignore us (and we them) if they don’t share those core values.

I think you nailed it upthread (emphasis mine):

I really think your right about this being a fight to save the entire country from eternal damnation and good evangelists forgive the sins and prior loyalties of new converts. They also preach the Gospel in hostile territory, even saving one soul is worth the risk.

My point, all along, has been that the first move among those white working class supporters of Donald Trump must be to come to us. Yes, we “preach the Gospel”. Still, it is the converts that we forgive the sins and prior loyalties of.

Since we’re using evangelists as a metaphor, I’ll cite Luke 9:5 (I use the RSV, and the same pericope is elsewhere):

And wherever they do not receive you, when you leave that town shake off the dust from your feet as a testimony against them.”

Even the Jesus of the gospels commands to not waste our time with those are not receptive to our invitation.

But we don’t know if they are not receptive if we don’t preach to them. I would argue that our party hasn’t been preaching to them for awhile, and it’s worth the effort. And I absolutely agree with you it’ll lead to as many electoral defections as it does conversions. But like Paul, it’ll plant little churches in the heart of the pagan empire that will someday grow into something real and powerful.

So long as the message that we preach to them stays consistent with our core values, I enthusiastically support bringing our message to working class whites who have supported Donald Trump.

It is what we do when those of them who really ARE deplorable spit in our faces that I part company with some here (not you).

A movement is underway to remove the monuments and symbols of black oppression from their current public places of honor. Legions of Americans who clearly share and embrace our core values join and celebrate that movement. Tens of thousands of us turned out out on the Boston Common only a few weeks ago.

Legions of Donald Trump and GOP supporters turned out in Charlottesville, carrying swastikas and torches, and driving a car through a crowd of our followers. Those Donald Trump supporters clearly, actively and often violently oppose our core values.

Some of us argue that we should talk about something else. Some of us argue that we don’t have any problems with racism here at home (even though a gang of New Hampshire children nearly killed an 8 year old in an attempted lynching).

We will do well to remember that a great many of those early apostles were murdered by the pagan empire they attempted to preach to.

Yes, we must talk about wealth concentration. Yes, we must talk about income concentration. Yes, we must talk about the class warfare that the 0.1% has waged for decades. Yes, we must talk about that to audiences both white and black.

When our white audiences whine about how we aren’t paying enough attention to them, though, I suggest that we need to remind those white audiences that the suffering they feel has been doubly borne — mostly silently — by blacks for generations. The suffering white AND black males feel has been even worse for white and black women for generations.

The exploitation that has been sucking blacks, Hispanics, and women dry for generations is now hitting white men. For some of those white men, that exploitation is suddenly a terribly urgent issue, one that MUST be addressed right now — and only for white men.

That is the trap we must avoid. Our black brothers and sisters have been on the front lines of this class war for generations. They are bloodied and weary. As we whites belatedly join the struggle, we will together finally begin to make some progress.

As we do, and as some of the stolen wealth begins to be redistributed, I suggest that we white men should step to the back of the line, so that those who have suffered so much more than us can receive the first fruits of our collective effort.

I enthusiastically support bringing our message to working class whites who have supported Donald Trump.

It is what we do when those of them who really ARE deplorable spit in our faces that I part company with some here (not you).

This was very constructive and I am happy to see we are on exactly the same page. Sometimes I think in responding to the *not me* opponent, you forget this important point. I think it’s entirely the right approach.

I think sometimes in my own (and dare I say unrelated) criticism of the Clinton campaign (which is totally distinct from the person), I also forgot that point. I think we can’t put either issue on the back burner since they are basically the conjoined twins of reactionary politics in this country.

The single largest enemy of all the people you pretend to care about is the wealthy .1% that you are perfectly willing to be a lap dog for because, as you said yourself, “the money has to come from somewhere”….

There are literally hundreds of reasons why she lost the general election. Many self inflicted, many the result of an unprecedented decades long effort to deligitmize her and her husband. Hundreds of reasons Bernie lost the primary, many the result of unfair institonal advantages and biases for Hillary, many self inflicted.

This fight is about reclaiming our country from a racist oligarchy. I will vote for any candidate willing to take that on and vote against any candidate active or passively enabling it. I will not be voting for Trump in 2020 nor will I be voting for any Republican in 2018-including Baker. I think literally everyone here is on board with that agenda. So how can we fight for both?

How can we fight for both, not just our elected officials, but we as ordinary citizens.

I will vote for any candidate willing to take that on and vote against any candidate active or passively enabling it.

Your history here suggests you’ll be unable to recognize either of the above conditions you’ve set forth to enable your vote either for or against.

Because, you see, Hillary Clinton called out the deplorables and she told coal miners, to their face, they’d have to re-train

Or, put another way: she did what you say she didn’t and everything you say you want

I posted a picture just upthread of Hillary Clinton in W. Va looking an out-of-work coal miner straight in the eye. You ignored it and, now, you want to get beyond Hillary v Bernie.

No.

The next person to come along won’t be Hillary Clinton but will be just like Hillary Clinton: he/she will make the same moves and the same statements. They will look the coal-miner in the eye and say “Your coal mining job is gone. I want to help you retrain. That’s how I will fight for you.” They will fight the same deplorables and they will face the same calumnies. They will be people of stable temperament and composure like Al Gore,John Kerry, Barack Obama and Deval Patrick. They will be steady hands who are steadfast in their refusal to take the wrong things seriously. They will not be angry old men like Bernie or Trump.

Any you will be off in la-la land looking for your happy unicorn-riding messiah because Hillary Clinton isn’t good enough for you.

I voted for her and spent far more time and money helping her than I did for Bernie. She also isnt the unicorn messiah you and Tom make her out to be. Neither is Bernie. My entire point is no single candidate will deliver us from this evil.

I have rededicated my life to fighting white supremacy in our curriculum and our schools since I honestly have given up on electoral politics as a vehicle for social change. We know what little good on racial and economic justice a Democratic supermajority and black Governor can do in the bluest state in the union.

If all you got out of the TNC essay is Hillary was better than Trump than you severely misread it. She was harshly criticized for a litany of racist policies she overtly or tacitly supported on her path to power. Obama and Bernie also supported racist policies in some of the bills they voted for. That’s how deep white supremacy goes-that even decent people have to cater to racists to win elections. How we solve that is a far more interesting and relevant challenge than us going back and forth for the next four years over why 2016 went so horribly wrong.

I think, James, that I have a fairly long history at this very site vigorously denying the notion that there are any messiahs in politics.

I think this is you saying, ‘well, if Petr is opposed to me, he must think the opposite of what I think, and if I think HRC was terrible therefore he must think she was wonderful.” It doesn’t work that way. Hillary was an acceptable candidate for me and for nearly 66 million others. She wasn’t the messiah, neither was she all that terrible. The outcome of the election was terrible. The current POTUS is terrible. But you conflate the terribleness of the outcome with the candidate and that is an unwise thing to do.

My point is that the next candidate will likely look and act a lot like Hillary Clinton: a strong, reasonable, wonkish hard worker who doesn’t let their anger get the better of them… probably as near as no never mind to an adequate description of the exact opposite of a racist. There is not a lot of daylight between Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama, both in policy and in temperament. There is not a lot of daylight, either in policy or in temperament, between Barack Obama and John Kerry. There is not a lot of daylight, either in policy or in temperament, between John Kerry and Al Gore. There is not a lot of daylight, either in policy or in temperament, between Al Gore and Mike Dukakis. There is not a lot of daylight, either in policy or in temperament, between Mike Dukakis and Jimmy Carter. These are the kind of people who are very very good at actually fixing things and less good at running for office in our day and age. And the people who are very good at running for office in our day and age are really only good at two things: getting people mad and breaking things.

You’re going to have to, at the very least, be open to the possibility of voting for someone no different than Hillary Clinton in the future. Somebody has to fix things

You’re going to have to, at the very least, be open to the possibility of voting for someone no different than Hillary Clinton in the future. Somebody has to fix things

I’m so open to this I actually voted for the original in 2016, and enthusiastically campaigned for her. Her career is over.

I think Bernie is settling into an elder statesmen role, sort of like Ted Kennedy after his 80′ campaign. The fact that Booker, Harris, and Warren are following his lead is proof that his direction is the vision the grassroots of the party wants to go.

Absolutely the Berniebros digging atHarris are being nitpicky at best, racially or sexually biased at worst. I think she’s great, and I think she’s exactly doing what she should be doing to be credible. Both/and.

Bernie totally wasn’t woke on race, Hillary totally wasn’t woke on populism. She admits as much in her book. So we need a both/and who can combine their best qualities. I am taking a strong look at Harris.

This specific exchange is NOT about “Hillary and Bernie” (I prefer “Ms. Clinton and Mr. Sanders”, BTW).

It is about YOU perpetuating a canard. You implied very strongly that our party did not “actually [go] to their communities and [have] these tough conversations.”

I’m sorry, but that’s just NOT true — petr and I are trying to explain that (again). Our party is not perfect, and we must do better.

Nevertheless, our party DID expel our southern racists — and by implication, their supporters — in 1968, and the GOP DID embrace, welcome and celebrate them. Hence the GOP “southern strategy”. That’s just a fact. Our party HAS fought for civil rights legislation for decades, and the GOP HAS resisted it for decades.

Well she never visited any communities in WI or MI so there are communities she ignored, as much as Sen Sanders ignored black issues at points in his campaign. My point is we can do much better, I am not going to argue about 2016 anymore since it’s a waste of time when our country is on the line.

Every state should have a viable and progressive Democratic alternative to the racist Republicans. You might think investing in elections in MS is a waste of time-I think it’s how we save the blacks in that state from a government that has continued Jim Crow under another name (welfare reform, Medicare cuts, etc.). You may think trying to get the minority of white progressives in the miners union organized is a waste of time. I don’t. I think that’s how we defeat bigotry and big business.

I still fear you miss the point of at least my response to your first, if not the response of petr.

For every candidate in every election, there will be communities that that candidate doesn’t visit and seems to ignore. My point, moving forward, is that we must resist the temptation to attack our nominee after a loss by citing only the communities that candidate didn’t visit or the issues apparently ignored by that candidate.

When contemplating personal investment strategies, it is not wise to emulate those of state Lottery winners, even if they’ve become very wealthy.

Well there’s not much we can do personally other than elect our candidates, but the party could do several things.

– Push for more accurate unemployment numbers (returning to old school counting).
– Push for a federal minimum wage indexed to some percentage of cost of living.
– Provide tax credits for modernization of things like mining. (Why are we building self-driving cars, when we could have robot miners?)
– The single mom could probably use some day care. We could have day care built in to assistance programs (maybe we already have this).

This is a key example of how our government — Republicans and Democrats alike — lies to us, by omission.

“Income” is something that the truly wealthy don’t need, don’t have, and don’t care about. It is an arbitrary number entered on tax forms by paid portfolio managers. If it is in the interest of the wealthy patron to report high income, the arbitrary number is large. If it is in the interest of that patron to report low or zero income, the arbitrary number is zero or negative.

“Income” is how some middle-class people (fewer and fewer) make transition into the “landed gentry” of the very wealthy. The primary effect of steeply progressive income tax rates is to erect even higher barriers to that transition.

Much more telling is the gift and estate tax. Who pays it, who does not, and whether it goes up, goes down, or stays the same.

We have historic highs of wealth concentration (though it is VERY difficult to gather the data that demonstrates that). Our gift and estate taxes are at historic LOWS, and the GOP is now redoubling its attempts to eliminate that altogether.

We must fight to reverse our extreme wealth concentration. In order to do that, we must DEMAND that our government publish data about it.

We must drive our “liberal” media outlets, like the Washington Post, New York Times, MSNBC, and others, to report on wealth concentration. We must TALK about it.

We must distinguish wealth concentration from income concentration. The former is the most urgent and severe issue our economy faces today, and we don’t even have data (never mind discussion) about it.

It is interesting that the specific example, on the one hand, is ‘coal miner.’ The Democratic perspective is that coal mining jobs are going away and they are not coming back. Hillary Clinton actually said that much directly to coal miners. Then she also said she wanted the government to be deliberate in their efforts to retrain and to educate people who were coal miners.

I saw a candidate treating people like adults, describing a problem and offering a solution.

So, my question is, if that’s ‘not hard enough,’ then what is?

The only other choice offered to the coal miners was the other guy who promised them sunshine and flowers and coal mining jobs ad infinitum… under the impossible, indeed thoroughly bogus, perspective that we can have all the coal jobs we want because…. I don’t know… ‘murca, I guess….

And how do we fight for the coal miners? Let’s agree that a coal miner is a person who has not been to college, maybe has no interest in doing so, and simply wants work with all the moral and spiritual values that go with it; and with work, a reasonable measure of security–security for themselves and for their family.

Democrats seem to say that only work that requires a college education is worthy of a reasonable measure of security–security for themselves and for their family.

Democrats don’t say that “only work that requires a college education is worthy of a reasonable measure of security. That’s patently false. You’re basing your opinion on the way things were 15-20 years ago. Your use of the word “seems” betrays your doubts about what you’re saying yourself. Things haven’t changed, but they are changing.

Spur investment. Hillary will create a national infrastructure bank to improve rural transportation and broadband access and grow the rural economy by expanding access to capital. She’ll also expand the New Markets Tax Credit that will encourage investments to prevent communities from spiraling downward after a major economic shift or plant closing.Support family farms. Hillary will increase funding to support the next generation of farmers and ranchers in local food markets and regional food systems. And she’ll create a focused safety net to help family farms get through challenging times.Promote clean energy. Hillary will encourage our nation’s commitment to clean energy by assisting farms that conserve and improve natural resources. She’ll also strengthen the Renewable Fuel Standard and double loans that help support the bio-based economy.Expand opportunity. Hillary will increase funding for Early Head Start, universal pre-K, free community college, and support for telemedicine and Medicaid expansion.

He lies about Democrats. He misquotes Democrats. He insults Democrats, personally, at every opportunity. He does the same about me.

In this comment he says:

Democrats seem to say that only work that requires a college education is worthy of a reasonable measure of security–security for themselves and for their family.

No, Democrats do NOT “seem” to say anything like that. JTM apparently HEARS that. It’s not as if this is first time he’s repeated this Limbaughesque lie. It’s been made and refuted numerous times here.

Not once has JTM offered a cite where a ANY Democrat has said anything like his cite. He doesn’t offer those because they don’t exist, and I think he knows it.

I don’t know JTM personally, I’m sure he’s a friendly and jovial man, just like me. I don’t know any other troll personally. It doesn’t matter. What matters is the persona that JTM maintains here.

I’ve been writing code for, supporting, participating in, and reading online communities like this since Ward Cunningham invented the very first wiki in 1997. I know Ward. With Ward’s blessing, I cloned the technology of that wiki into several Cambridge companies in the late 1990s, long before Wikipedia or any of the blogs that are now so universal.

A “troll” is a persona that someone creates on a site like this. I know trolls, I’ve been dealing with them for twenty years.

Tom, you are on record as a sell-out to Wall Street and the .1% with your own words. The money HAS to come from somewhere.

You are on record with your admiration of the Clintons and their deregulation of Wall Street, NAFTA, increased regulation of welfare and the infamous crime bill that send thousands of poor working class minorities to prison.

Campaign contributions do have to come from somewhere. It is possible to accept a campaign contribution without “selling out”. The connection between admiring Mr. and Ms. Clinton and “selling out” is your own. It exemplifies your Limbaughesque hostility.

Tom Steyer is a multi-billionaire and the largest single contributor to Democratic candidates. He is also a leader in the fight against climate change denial, a leader in the fight against Citizens United, and relatively long list of similar stances. You label him, apparently, a sell-out because he has deep pockets. The same is true for George Soros.

I am on record as saying that so long as Citizens United is the law of the land, we must not disarm. I stand by that statement. I know of no twisted “logic” that starts with Tom Steyer and ends with “sell-out to Wall Street”.

I suggest that, in fact, there is nothing logical about it. I think you’re just trolling.

The problem is you have repeatedly taken out of context a one-time acknowledgement about how campaign finance works and continued to beat Tom over the head with it. That line is probably, what, two years old now?

Until he admits that it was the wrong thing to do AND that the Clinton duo really did screw ordinary working class citizens, I will continue to portray him as he is, warts and all. It was not “out of context”. I argued that we, as Democrats can’t be cozy with Wall Street and the .1% that controls it and he defended Hillary and her ties to it.

The big difference between me and JTM is that I actually don’t think she was an ideologically compromised candidate. I agree our next nominee will run on largely the same platform. Maybe a little more open to single payer and a $15/hour minimum wage, than she was, but not substantially more radical. Bernie is more rhetorically radical, but we are talking about the difference in degree between public option and single payer or free community college and free public colege. So let’s cut the crypto-Republican charge, especially when a crypto-Nazi is leading the GOP today.

But she also didn’t run a single ad on this plan in response to the Trump attack on coal. She just let it stand and define her. I always thought she would be a good President, I actually got excited about voting for her toward the end since I was expecting her to kick ass in the White House. I actually think she and her team did a lousy job explaining what she was for and spent far more time attacking Trump and trying to define him rather than trying to redefine Hillary as the person who had their back. She missed a lot of opportunities to do that throughout the campaign, and adopting populist rhetoric is just as important as adopting populist policies.

And how do we fight for the coal miners? Let’s agree that a coal miner is a person who has not been to college, maybe has no interest in doing so, and simply wants work with all the moral and spiritual values that go with it; and with work, a reasonable measure of security–security for themselves and for their family.

We know your argument John, you’ve made it enough and with real passion. But it’s not this. It doesn’t fit here.

The Democratic position, which I agree with, is that coal mining jobs are going away. Within a generation they will be gone, just like that of whaler, lamplighter, chandler and scrivener, all of which were once seen as solid work with with ‘all the moral and spiritual values that go with it” but they went away nonetheless. So too, it will be, with coal miner.

What do you propose to do about it? Deny them any education and retraining because… why? Because elitisim? Elitism wouldn’t even notice their plight and, if it did, would welcome a method to keep them down. The last thing an elitist wants is to educate others. Because work? Their work is going away and the skills they’ve honed in that work are unlikely to directly transfer to another job.

Honestly Petr had Hillary said exactly that during her three debates with Trump it would’ve really landed with a lot of voters who thought they both sucked. That’s the kind of hard truth telling we need from politicians. I think she played Martyball and missed a lot of opportunities to go on offense on the economy.

We can all cite her great plan chapter and verse, maybe because I wrote a whole thread praising it during the campaign. it was nowhere on her literature, nowhere in an ad, nowhere in her convention speech, and nowhere in the debates. This is the kind of thing I mean when I say her campaign made a lot of really simple errors that added up in the end.

I think future candidates can run and win on that message-it needs to be the 4th bullet point not the 94th page of a 150 page policy memo.

Let me make this as simple as I can. If jobs that only require a high school education are going away and those that remain are not deserving of a sustainable wage and any possibility of raising a family….and ONLY occupations that require a college degree merit such things…..please explain to us all an economy that operates on this set of rules is possible.

My friend, Albert, was fond of saying ‘Things should be made as as simple as possible, but no simpler…”

If jobs that only require a high school education are going away

I think this is what Albert meant. You’re generalizing.

Coal mining jobs are going away. Those particular jobs. Nobody said anything about all jobs that only require a high school education. That’s you over-simplifying.

Coal mining is actually a high-skill job, right up there with electrician and plumber and other specialized fields. It requires knowledge of geology, excavation, HVAC (on a large scale), demolition, mechanics and requires a safety mindset different from other jobs. People who do it should be, one would think, fairly easily retrainable. And retraining presumes a surplus of other jobs to transition into…

So you’ve not answered my question. What do you propose to do? How will you ‘fight hard’ for the coal miner in these circumstances? What is your solution? If these coal mining jobs are going away, and you can’t bring them back, how will you address the now outta-work, former coal miner?

I am using the term “coal miner” to cover the broad spectrum of ordinary working class individuals who used to be able to live a sustainable middle class life. What do I propose to do?

I propose to support a Democratic Party that supports the working class, not the Wall Street investor class, despite the claims from so many Democrats that “the money has to come from somewhere”.

At the moment we have a few Democrats calling for health care as a citizen’s right but some reasons, the Democratic leaders in the house and senate and the party itself are not among them.

Why is that? Why are these key Democrats insisting that health care remain a commodity furnished by the corporate sector with its fiduciary obligation to provide a profit to that sector?

These are the same sorts that want to deregulate Wall Street as Clinton did. These are the same sorts that want increased regulations on the working class and poor, as Clinton did…..and there are still Democrats who still admire the Clintons for this, still think that health care as a right should never ever happen…..because they decided to sell out.

I am using the term “coal miner” to cover the broad spectrum of ordinary working class individuals who used to be able to live a sustainable middle class life.

That’s very nice. I am not.

I propose to support a Democratic Party

That’s not an answer. What is you think the Democratic Party should do? In what way, faced with the situation, is an elected Democrat supposed to act? You’ve told us what you don’t like. We know that. You’ve told us again. We still know. You’ve told us what should NOT happen. You have not told us what SHOULD happen. You’ve said that you will fight for them. You say a Democrat should fight for them. Very well. I’m asking, what does that look like?

I ask again. In the instance you are faced with a specific group of workers whose specific job is going away. What do you propose to do to fight hard for them?

If you do nothing specific, those workers will be unemployed and on their own to find more work. I’m not sure they’ll care either way that you got to moon the 1%… what are you going to do about them?

Why is it “going away”? Cui bono? Tell me that and I will tell you the solution’s.

Why did the job of “whaler” go away?
Why did the job of “chandler” go away?
Why did the job of “lumberjack” go away?
Why did the job of “gas station attendant” go away?
Why did the job of “scrivener” go away?
Why did the job of “fo’cs’le jack” go away?
Why did the job of “latin interpreter” go away? (to bad for you, you’d understand ‘cui bono’ better…)
Why did the job of “ice/milk/paper/maytag repair man” go away?
Why did the job of “cowboy” go away?
Why did the job of “village idiot” go away?
Why did the job of “Beadle” go away?
Why did the job of “arkwright” go away?
Why did the job of “sineater” go away?

What I propose to do depends on the circumstances, eh? If a mine closes, and if the mine was owned, collectively by the miners, managed by the miners, they would have, one assumes, advanced warnings and plans set in place or that event. If, however, the mine is owned by a group of faceless hedge fund managers, the miners are left out in the cold. I’d start there. I’d start with a tax code, a labor policy that encouraged employee ownership of any enterprise. I’d continue with a rigorous restructuring of how people like hedge fund managers and bankers earn their wages and see to it that they could not afford to spend $225,000 to listen to a “speech” from a presidential candidate, nor have any hope that the $225,000 would be used to elevate their economic status.

What I propose to do depends on the circumstances, eh? If a mine closes…

No, John.

When A mine closes miners get to the next mine and find work there. Just like in 1830 when one whaling ship landed it debarked the crew and they walked the quay to the next ship and signed up there. This is not that situation.

This is the coal industry first automating heavily, and then going away entirely. Just like the whaling industry went away when the use of whale oil was supplanted by other fuels (like coal) or like the candle-making industry went away when, first, natural gas became plentiful and later when electricity took hold. Just like when the age of sail, giving way to the propellor, sailors went away. And as cargo shipping in bulk gave way to container shipping, so to did the job of longshoreman. So to, as refrigeration made both the iceman and the milkman obsolete., the job of iceman and the job of milkman (or sometimes called dairy man, ’cause they delivered butter and eggs also, amongst other dairy products) went away.

The out of work former coal miner has no mine to which he/she can go and that has less to do with the owner of the mine than with simple economics. If this was just about connecting individual miners with mines in need of workers, we wouldn’t even be having this conversation. This is about an industry downsizing itself away to nothing. What will you do about that situation?

Okay, since you don’t seem to like any of my replies, what would you recommend we do with working class citizens whose labor is not longer required by the employer class?

I’ve already told you. You don’t like it. That’s how we got into this debate… or have you lost the thread?

Here, let me help you pick it up again:

Rep Kennedy said “We fight for Both.”

I said, “How you gonna do that?”

Somebody else said “Go to where they are.”

I replied “look, here’s a picture of our candidate going to where they are, talking directly to them. Telling them what our party believes needs to be told” Then I said, “IF THAT”S NOT FIGHTING FOR THEM, WHAT IS?”.

You said what you always say when somebody mentions retraining and/or education.

Because I’m stupid enough to try to talk straight to you, I asked “what would you do?” You have yet to answer that question.

You said what you would do in an entirely different circumstance: what to do about J. Random Worker at the mercy of hedge fund managers. I very much like that response FOR THAT CIRCUMSTANCE. It does not apply any more broadly, however.

You have not answered the question of how you, or anybody in the Democratic party, would or should, fight for someone whose industry is going away.

candle-making industry went away when, first, natural gas became plentiful and later when electricity took hold. Just like when the age of sail, giving way to the propellor, sailors went away

you make the false assumption that there will always be a shortage of labor and as such, a profitable market for those looking to sell their labor.

This is the truth in early America. We had an abundance of resources and a tremendous shortage of labor because the land was not developed and we killed or drove off most of the native labor. Wave upon wave of immigrants traveled from the old world to the new world because they could sell their labor for more. That all slowed or stopped in the 1920’s and 1930’s.

Why just workers in dying enterprises? Why not fight for all working class citizens?

In a fair economic model, working class citizens involved in a failing enterprise would receive equal assistance as the investor class. So as we look at Obama and the neoliberal model, we see massive capital and assets moved to protect the investor class but little or nothing to the working class, because in the neoliberal model, it is assumed that the investor class will eventually provide for the working class.

To quote Albert Einstein: “Things should be as simple as possible, and not more so.”

You are the only person here using phrases like “deserving of”, “worthy of”, or “merit”. The plain truth is that people without a college degree have, on average, about half the lifetime earning potential of those with a degree.

That’s just a fact. It has nothing to do with “deserving”, “worth”, or “merit”. Those are all value judgments. A train that attempts to traverse a 70MPH curve at 120MPH is going to derail. The engine and cars do not “deserve” anything, there is no moral choice involved — it is a simple fact, implied by basic high-school physics.

All of us have been in violent agreement with you for years here that our economy is dreadfully and obscenely unfair to our least fortunate brothers and sisters. It always has been, and it is markedly more so now than it has been before.

We MUST change the rules that govern this economy. We MUST, in particular, take back the wealth that microscopically small number of our wealthiest individuals are plundering from the rest of us.

Your attacks on each and every proposal to make education more available to those who are otherwise able to get a college degree or other training only add to this already evil and immoral situation.

HRC was not against those things. If either of the first two had landed on her desk she would sign them in a heartbeat. In fact she was supportive of $15 in many local circumstances. She just felt she had to be realistic which is reasonable given the political fights she has experienced over the years. The last one she was very much actively for and said so numerous times.

The coal miner in Kentucky and the single mom in the Bronx are both “ordinary working class citizens”. This is not a “both” this is a “all”. There is no real difference between the two unless you want to enter into what they look like, what church they may go to, who they sleep with, or any other metric that so many Democrats are fond of doing, a practice that simply pits one working class group against another.

Democrats can win back the trust of the working class American, but only if they realize that they cannot serve two masters.